Rand Paul calls for eliminating undercard debate

At this point, Sen. Rand Paul thinks it's time to do away with the undercard Republican presidential debate.

"I'm not sure where the purpose is anymore, if there ever was one," Paul told POLITICO in a telephone interview on Friday. "I think if you have a national campaign, you've raised a significant amount of money, you're on the ballot, you've employed staff and you're actively campaigning, you've got to be in the debate."

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His comments come just a few days before the next Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. Paul just barely made it into the last Republican presidential debate after being in danger of being booted from the main stage. There is a possibility that he will not qualify for the next debate, but his campaign insists he'll be there in prime time. Paul has said that he will refuse to participate in any undercard debates, no matter his poll numbers.

Paul, in the same interview, also criticized the format of the Jan. 14 debate, arguing that real estate mogul Donald Trump is allotted too much time and that where candidates stand onstage should be chosen randomly.

"I think it's a mistake to pre-decide that Trump should get twice as much time on the stage. I think it should be somewhat equal. We ought to shuffle the positions because by basing everything on polls, we are pre-deciding the election," Paul said. (In the last GOP debate on Dec. 15, it was actually Ted Cruz who spoke the most.)

Paul's larger critique centers on his claim that there's way too much flimsy polling being used to define which candidate is at the front of the pack, and which candidate is straggling behind. Paul, both national and early state polls say, is polling near the lower end of the Republican presidential field — but his campaign ferociously argues that such surveys underestimate the Kentucky senator's grass-roots appeal.

On Friday, Paul's campaign announced that it had secured more than 1,000 precinct captains in Iowa, where he averages 2 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average of state polls. Paul noted that he had more precinct captains than his father, who won the most delegates in 2012, and almost as much as former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum during the same election cycle, who won the popular vote.

"I think my dad in 2012 had about 600 precinct chairs. We have about 1,000," Paul said. "So, we've organized beyond their capacity in 2012. Rick Santorum with about a week to go in 2012 announced 1,100 precinct chairs, so to put it in perspective yeah, it's quite a feat."